


Thankful

by moodymarshmallow



Category: Dragon Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodymarshmallow/pseuds/moodymarshmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Birthday gift fic for Djkaeru on Tumblr, who wanted Anders and a stuffed animal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thankful

It was ugly, tiresome work, running a clinic in Darktown, and at times it hardly seemed as though it were worth it. Often, a patient would come in with a life-threatening ailment, terrified and close to death, and he’d do everything he could for them, only to see them on the slab in the makeshift morgue later that month.

The Undercity was killing people faster than he could keep up with it, between the disease and the violence, it was a wonder anyone actually  _lived_  down there. It seemed to Anders that the just filtered down here to die, as though the surface wouldn’t even give them the last dignity of a peaceful death and a proper burial **.**

Anders did what he could. There were children down here, and no mother deserved to see her child ripped away from her too soon by some easily treatable illness, something that in Hightown, they would have caught early on, or even prevented with proper sanitation and a healthy diet. Most of the kids he saw were thin, wasted, and their parents even more so. He couldn’t fix that. All he could do was cure their latest case of cough or fever and send them on their way, then light the lanterns in the morning and do it all over again.

It had been one of those days, yet another one where it was thankless and hard, and he spent every spare moment he had sitting at the desk with his head in his hands, too exhausted to think. Justice kept urging him that he was doing the right thing, healing these people, keeping them alive for another week or two, but it was hard to believe that sometimes.   
  
A small noise alerted him from near the desk and he opened his eyes to see one of his former patients standing there—a little girl, no more than ten, easily, was shifting from foot to foot, her hands behind her back.

“Hello sweetheart,” Anders said, trying to remember her name and failing. There were so many like her. So many little girls with skinned knees and broken arms, looking sad and hungry and too innocent for Darktown. “Are your parents here? Are you ill?” She shook her head vigorously, looking down at her feet and shuffling them in the dirt for a moment. “Are your parents ill?” It wouldn’t have been the first time that a child came to get him, hoping that he could help a dying parent.   
  
“No, but my mom says you helped me when I was sick, so I wanted to thank you.”

Anders stared at her for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what he was hearing, shaking himself out of it enough to smile down at her from his seat at the desk, turning to face her fully. “That’s very kind of you to come all this way just to say thank you. Your parents taught you well.”   
  
The girl took another step towards him, this time dropping her hands from behind her back so that he could see she was holding a raggedy stuffed rabbit. She thrust it at him, a shy smile on her face. “Here.”   
  
“Oh, I can’t take your bunny.” Anders smiled, this time for real, the edges of his eyes crinkling in genuine sweetness as he turned her down. “That wouldn’t be right; besides, this is a free clinic. You don’t have to pay me.”

“I want you to have it.” For how shy she seemed before, the girl was resolute as she stood near him, rabbit at arm’s length, waiting for him to take it. “Take it. Please.”   
  
“How about this,” Anders said, sliding out of his chair to crouch near her, hands on his knees. “I’ll let your bunny stay here for a bit and he can watch me work. But only for a short while, and then you can come back for him, okay?” The little girl nodded, clasping her hands behind her back again when he gently took the stuffed animal from her.   
  
“Bye messere healer!” She waved to him as she trotted out of the clinic, satisfied now that he was holding the rabbit. Anders shook his head and stood up, his back feeling stiff and sore from sitting in that awkward chair for so long.

Anders looked down at the rabbit in his hand, giving it a small squeeze as he looked at its weak seams and threadbare body. It was well-loved. He sat it down at the desk, thinking that perhaps he could find some good thread and fabric and fix it up, so it would be better than new the next time she came by.   
  
Suddenly, the job didn’t seem so thankless after all.


End file.
